Roberta Reynolds to head Burbank school board

After Roberta Reynolds took her seat as president of the Burbank School Board on Thursday, she congratulated David Gordon for becoming the city’s mayor earlier that day — the first time he was selected for that role after serving eight years on the City Council.

Reynolds credited him for raising “some very difficult questions” several years ago over the school district’s spending of its previous bond that voters approved in 1997.

With the district’s accountability in question by several residents as well, Burbank Unified spent $300,000 to hire a firm to perform an audit that discovered in 2011 that no fraudulent activity occurred. The firm found the district accurately reported how it spent about $274 million from 1995 through 2010.

“It resulted in our efforts to dig into all the spending that we had done on the bond previously,” Reynolds said of Gordon’s questions. “And the end result of that is we restored a lot of the credibility that we had in this district and that was probably one of the reasons that we were able to pass [another] bond,” she said of the $110-million Measure S bond voters passed in 2013.

“It’s quite a pleasure to be coming in as board president the same time as he is coming in as mayor, and I think we’re going to have a great relationship with the city,” she said.

Reynolds, a Burbank native, pharmacist, and mother of two adult daughters, was first elected to the board in 2007, and has previously served as president.

Outgoing school board President Dave Kemp thanked school officials, teachers and staff for their hard work and acknowledged Supt. Jan Britz, who took the helm of the district in 2012 with about 20 days’ notice, he said, after the former superintendent, Stan Carrizosa, took a position elsewhere.

“Here’s an individual that has stepped into the breach and has done a pretty darn fantastic job under the circumstances,” he said. “It could not have been better for me to be board president with Jan Britz as my superintendent.”

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Follow Kelly Corrigan on Twitter: @kellymcorrigan.

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